Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Paperback | Pages: 112 pages Rating: 3.88 | 12025 Users | 423 Reviews
Define Books Conducive To The Visit
| Original Title: | Der Besuch der alten Dame |
| ISBN: | 0802130666 (ISBN13: 9780802130662) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Claire Zachanassian |
| Setting: | Switzerland |
| Literary Awards: | New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play (1959) |
Commentary In Favor Of Books The Visit
This is the first complete English translation of the play that many critics consider to be Durrenmatt's finest work. Unlike an earlier version adapted for the English-language stage, this translation adheres faithfully to the author's original play as it was published and performed in German. The action of The Visit takes place in the small town of Guellen, "somewhere in Central Europe." An elderly millionairesse, Claire Zachanassian, returns to Guellen, her home town, after an absence of many years. Merely on the promise of her millions, she shortly turns what has been a depressed area into a boom town. But there is a condition attached to her largess, which the natives of Guellen realize only after they have become enmeshed in her vengeful plot: murder. Out of these elements, Durrenmatt has fashioned a many-leveled play which is at once a macabre parable, a deeply moving tragedy, and a scathing indictment of the power of greed.Identify Appertaining To Books The Visit
| Title | : | The Visit |
| Author | : | Friedrich Dürrenmatt |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 112 pages |
| Published | : | January 7th 1994 by Grove Press (first published 1980) |
| Categories | : | Plays. Classics. Drama. European Literature. German Literature. Fiction. Academic. School |
Rating Appertaining To Books The Visit
Ratings: 3.88 From 12025 Users | 423 ReviewsPiece Appertaining To Books The Visit
Among the many explorations of the notion and the phenomena of evil this is on the top of my list of darkness, ranked even higher than the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo. But don't look for Mengele in this play for he is in another book by Dürrenmatt (Der Verdacht). Here you will find Eichmann, the spanish inquisition, the malleus maleficarum, in a way even aspects of 1984 by reading closely. The Crucible by Arthur Miller? Yes, but from a point of view slightly different. Mad Emperors likeUpdated review/commentary:Timing, it is said, is everything. As I reached the section on The Visit (Der Besuch der Alten Dame) in Peter Rüedi's interminable biography of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, it coincided with the last Sunday before the presidential election. Dürrenmatts writing always seems to be girded by a strong intuition, perhaps clairvoyance is more accurate, about the future, perhaps never more so than in The Visit. Three things really stood out for me on this rereading:Rüedi recalls a
A fantastic play at turns grotesque, comic, and austere. The classically tragic vein is more apparent here than in other works by this author, and yet any claims to moral certainty seems forced. A play to make you think. Durrenmatt destabilizes the meanings of words like Justice, Integrity, and Progress, so that any way of looking at the conflict reveals a moral code. Notably, these possible moralities only appear as strong as their adherents, all of whom have realistically limited agency.
Friedrich Durrenmatt is a wonderful Swiss writer who wrote some of the sparest and most compelling words I have ever read. Words which challenge, confound and cause you to happily ponder away for hours while never preaching. The play takes on utilitarianism with a broadside aimed at the famous Bentham quote "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong".In a small Central European city which bears a marked resemblance to an entire number of german
Is this the grimmest, darkest comedy ever written? It may well be. When a woman scorned returns to the community that rejected her after decades away, with an entourage of freaks and cripples and a hideous, inhuman demand, the impoverished community must decide whether to appease the monster they created or stand up for their principles and suffer. Either way, they win- either way, they lose. Durrenmatt's play revels in its moral darkness, and some may find it disturbing. That is, after all, the
"Ich beschreibe Menschen, nicht Marionetten, eine Handlung, nicht eine Allegorie, stelle eine Welt auf, keine Moral".- Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Anmerkung I, p. 141The quotation cited above is useful information, because I came up with some weird and rather nasty interpretations of this play while reading it. Dürrenmatt's emphasis on taking this text at face value is reassuring in this case. It may perhaps also be the most useful and accurate interpretation, in that it comes closest to the
Sifting this play like a wine the first notes I pick up are Kurt Vonnegut, a pleasant surprise, followed by faint hints of Faulkner in the backwoods setting and the filial relations of the Ill family; and if I were to guess what kind of wine it is exactly I would say it comes from Greece, either a new varietal or a young crop of an ancient vintage. Decent legs (even if one is artificial), with opulent flavour.My first foray into Dürrenmatt was a success. Granted, this is meant to be his best
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